


And now assassination is just the only way

by EVVS



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Assassin AU, Assassins & Hitmen, Canon-Typical Violence, Clintasha - Freeform, Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EVVS/pseuds/EVVS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been used as an assassin for nearly ten years, so it's only natural for Hawkeye to run into the woman who calls herself Black Widow. He just didn't expect her to keep showing up and be such a pain in the ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And now assassination is just the only way

He swears to god that she has been put on this earth just to drive him up a fucking wall.

He keeps finding her where he definitely doesn’t want her. That Black Widow keeps showing up and ruining his damn day.

They’ve fought at least twice, going hand-to-hand even, and she’s broken a couple of his ribs and managed to shoot him a few times (nonlethal, he can’t be too angry, but it doesn’t make her any less of a pain in his ass). He likes to think that he nicked her once with an arrow and gave her a black eye, but he can’t actually be sure of that— she vanished afterwards. But Clint likes to think he got a couple hits in on her.

This is the third time this month that she’s shown up on the same premises. Except this time, she wants to take over _his_ nest where _he’s_ been camping out for two solid days now and has a gun pointed at _his_ head because that’s the only answer to anything, obviously.

To be fair, he’s immediately got an arrow pointed at her too, so.

She’s the first to break the silence. “I’m here for Kilgore.” Her eyes are steel, only watching his face.

He takes a moment to process this. “Ramsey.” Not the same target. No reason for conflict. Their jobs can be done simultaneously. Very slowly, even reluctantly, he releases the tension in his bow and watches as she lets her gun fall.

The silence falls thick in the air. He slides the arrow back in his quiver; she holsters her gun.

Although her posture is stiff, her eyes are searching the room. Of course, Clint knows it’s a mess, he’s got some blankets tossed in a corner for a bed and there are plenty of empty take out containers sitting in a big pile on the opposite side of the room; the only cleared space is in front of the window where he’s been sitting and watching. “Your window has the perfect shot for tomorrow,” she comments gently.

“I’m aware.” He won’t put his bow away entirely. She’s a pain in his ass, but she isn’t in his way today. He’s got SHIELD’s orders to kill Douglas Ramsey and get the hell out, it’s that easy. He has all of one goal. As long as the Widow doesn’t interfere with that much, he knows he’s fine. Plus, she isn’t punching or shooting him right now, so that’s an improvement from their previous encounters.

There’s hesitation in her posture. “What if we shared?”

He shifts his weight, grip loosening on his bow. Separate jobs. He’s just trying to cause a delay in negotiations by killing the conciliator, while she’s aiming to kill off one of the negotiating parties. Clint has his mission. That’s about it. So what’s it to him if she just sticks around?

“Fair enough.”

Really, his loyalty to SHIELD is… flexible. He’s getting paid to kill people, he gets a bed and some solid food. But this gig feels just as temporary as the foster homes and the circus. He gets a file, he gets his ammo, and suddenly he’s sleeping in a different place each night; it’s like nothing has changed since he was a kid. So even though he knows that she’s getting in the way of his mission, only by the end result that SHIELD wants, not what he was sent to do, she won’t cause him any personal harm. He’ll still get his food and bed and pay.

That night, he sleeps in the mess of blankets while she sits upright in the corner like a statue. The next day, as the peace talks begin, they shoot side-by-side in silence and then get the hell out of there, Clint to his extraction point, the woman to wherever the Widow goes when she’s not in a murderous mood.

He doesn’t mind her so much now. But he’s still not happy about that time she put him in the infirmary.

\--

The second time she shows up, he’s not quite so surprised. He still lifts his bow and aims right for her skull until she looks up from cleaning beneath her fingernails with a knife. “You get here too early,” Black Widow remarks, sounding bored.

“You show up too late.” He lets his guard down, which may or may not be his mistake. She didn’t kill him last time. “I have to pick a good perch. Otherwise the best angle is lost, which is why you’re consistently missing out.”

The Widow scoffs and flicks her knife closed, slipping it into her belt. “I don’t always want to take out a target long-range. It’s unnecessary when there are better options.” Her eyes are level with his, cool and severe. “This leaves a higher tendency to miss.”

“I don’t miss.” Clint’s voice is stiff.

She smirks and stretches one arm over her head before rising, like a cat waking up from a long nap. “Oh, I know. You usually hit your mark. Who is sometimes my mark.” It’s a game of who gets there first, he realizes, and she’s known about this competition longer than he has. Maybe he’s fucked her over just as many times as she’s done it to him. “I don’t like it when I don’t get paid.”

It’s nice to hear someone who finally shares his point of view. It’s about the job. The killing is a consequence of being paid. And he just wants to get paid. “Who’s your mark?”

“Mandarin. Arms dealer.”

“I’m spotting my employers.” The annoyance drips from his words. “Just playing protective sniper for the day.” It’s a waste of his talents. He’s got a goddamn gift. And he’s spending his time saving men who may not even need to be saved. Clint doesn’t take much pleasure in the idea of killing either, really, but his fingers itch when he feels wasted like this. He feels like he’s got a lot to do in the world before he goes out, but standing in the shadows and watching for potential threats isn’t exactly how he wants to spend his earthly time.

Those blue eyes narrow. “Your employers aren’t associates of the Mandarin, correct?” Because that would create a conflict of interest.

“Not even.”

And it’s all business. She will go about her way, he will go about his. They can share the view of where the deal will drop tomorrow, she can take out her mark, and he can pretend like she never existed.

Still, a question lingers in the air. “How did you know it was me?” he asks, wondering why she wasn’t worried about running into a squatter or even another assassin, someone who wasn’t quite as friendly as Clint just so happened to be, if friendly was even an appropriate word considering his profession. (She shared the same profession, but “friendly” was not a term he would bestow upon her by any means.)

“You wrap your blankets weird.” She nods towards the pile that he calls a bed. “It’s like a nest. Never seen anyone who even needs that many blankets.” Her lips curl upwards in a smile as her eyes take on a certain teasing glint. “It’s funny, considering your codename.”

Shit, so she’s got some kind of file on him. Of course, he got ahold of the file on her after she kicked his ass that one time. He didn’t want to run up against her again without some more details into who this bitch was. Black Widow. Real name unknown. Russian. Lethal. Known to use tasers and guns. Skilled in martial arts. 

Assassin.

Now he knows. But he wishes he had the upper hand because he knows his files probably contained a lot more than hers did, so he’s at a disadvantage on intel.

“It’s because of the sharpshooting,” he defends, voice sounding a little bit like a petty child’s, but he doesn’t realize this until after it’s out and it’s not like he can swallow his words now. “And it’s not like I can carry a mattress around with me on ops.”

“Fair enough.”

He recognizes the irony but won’t mention it. “We can share again,” he offers, knowing she wants to get paid just as much as he does, and their jobs don’t interfere. “You’ll just have to be out of here quick afterwards before my handler swoops in.”

At the word “swoops” she smiles again, and he almost wants to punch himself, or maybe he wants to punch her, because clearly she’s just an asshole and he’s just invited an asshole to stay the night. He’s not even afraid of her, he’s just annoyed with her. “It’s just a codename,” he defends sharply.

“Sure it is, Hawkeye.”

Damn the Widow.

\--

He’s just getting comfortable. Bow at the ready, breathing regulated. He’s got confirmation from his handler inside that the mark is heading up to his room, a woman in tow. All he has to do is hit the guy and get out to the extraction point. Then he’s safe again and will get paid.

There. The hotel room door opens. He lets himself focus.

That bitch.

The woman with the mark is the goddamn Black Widow, and he can’t believe it. He almost wants to shoot her just for the fun of it, but there’s really no time to because she’s crossing the room and reaching for the blinds. Clint knows his hesitation was enough because as he’s scrambling to get himself back at the ready, she looks right in his direction and _winks_.

The curtains slide shut, and he’s lost all visual on the mark. And on Widow.

“Fucking-“

Now he isn’t going to get paid. And he drops his bow and snaps the arrow in his hand in half because of all the things he thought she would be a bitch about, he didn’t think she would cut into his paycheck so blatantly.

They’re assassins. They kill, they get paid. She clearly knew he was up there; they could’ve talked something out in order to both get credit for the same kill, both of them get paid. But apparently today isn’t that kind of day.

Next time, he’s not going to be quite so nice to her. He’s trying to save up for a new motorcycle.

\--

“Nice to see that you don’t only do long-range.”

He’s not necessarily surprised, but he’s also certainly not happy. Her voice sounds calm and even maybe carries a slight twinge of excitement. Clint’s not quite sure what to do with this information, but he tries to keep his posture rigid, knowing he needs to keep his cover as security detail for this charity gala. The earwig is functioning as his hearing aid as well as filling his ear with SHIELD nonsense. The one thing he hates the most about this whole governmental bullshit is that he has to have a handler. He can handle himself, thank you.

“I can do undercover.”

“This isn’t undercover. This is a quick kill.”

She’s right. This is really like a snatch and grab, basically, except with murder instead of robbery. Undercover is a little more sticky, and he does hate it. Still, he’s not going to let her know that. He can’t show his hand.

Her eyes scan him over, that gaze stopping every few seconds for a thorough analysis. Then she’s ready to pick his scheme apart: “You snuck in with the rest of the guards, probably with someone else causing a distraction so no one would notice one quick addition with the wrong ID card.” She reaches out and taps his security badge, which is definitely not of the highest quality. Just enough to get by. Just like the rest of his life. “Didn’t know you worked with a partner, Hawkeye. Not in your file. Not to mention I never pegged you for the type.”

“Handler.” He’s pretty sure a partner would drive him up a fucking wall faster than any handler could. And then it occurs to him that he’s just shot himself in the foot because he shouldn’t have told her that.

“Even worse,” she laughs before taking a moment to observe the crowd, watching the people very, very carefully. And in her silence, Clint dares to chance a look.

Yes, he isn’t anywhere near undercover compared to her. She’s in a strapless black dress with heels that could easily kill to the point of he’s not sure whether or not they’re actually her weapons. Her hair is pin straight, which is strange to see, but he tries to keep any reaction off his face despite the fact that she does look very nice.

“So you got in by the guards and now you’re standing watch.” She leans a little closer to him, trying to follow his line of sight. (He doesn’t swallow hard at the proximity. He doesn’t.) “And it looks like we’re sharing a target tonight.”

“Madame Masque?”

“Her real name is Whitney Frost,” she corrects in a slow tone, as if talking to a child. “But yes.” For a heartbeat, her Russian accent almost slips through.

“How about yours?”

For once, he catches her off guard. Finally. He can see the confusion temporarily flash across her pointed features. There’s a flare of something similar to panic in her eyes. Clint tries his hardest to keep a grin off his face.

“What?” she asks, although he’s pretty sure she knows exactly what he’s asking. The way she takes a more defensive stance as she leans away is enough to prove that.

“Your real name.” Because it’s not like they’re friends, but hey, he’s not going to tell anyone. He has no one to even tell.

Even if she tells him, he’s not going to put it in his mission report; he respects her too much. (Also, he’s a little bit terrified of her.) And anyways, he doesn’t live by SHIELD’s protocols. He kills. He leaves. He gets paid. It’s like a ritual at this point. He’s almost even wiped away all guilt at the idea of taking a life. Almost. Still, there are nights where he wakes up and remembers that there’s blood on his hands. Not that it scares him, just that he knows he can’t forget about it, and maybe that kind of permanence of anything scares him more. After all, his life has been all temporary events up until now.

There is a delay in her reactions, and the Widow blinks slowly before drawing in a deep breath. “Don’t drink anything,” she warns in a low, menacing tone before drifting off, heels clicking against the floor, offsetting the beat of the music because they’re all he cares to zone in on in the crowd of this gala.

He realizes only a few seconds later that he forgot to bitch her out for ruining his shot two weeks ago.

Clint Barton hates the Black Widow.

\--

“I need a favor.”

Her voice doesn’t scare Clint, but he’s definitely not prepared to see her sitting next to his nest – bed, it’s his bed – with one of his blankets pressed into an open wound on her abdomen. He’s not happy that she picked his blankets to bleed on, but she looks like shit, paler than usual, and he can’t waste time. There’s kind of unspoken rule at this point that they don’t kill each other, but he’s not going to let her die either. There’s no paycheck behind her death. There’s no need for her blood on his hands. So he unzips a duffel bag and rifles around through dirty clothes before pulling out a first aid kit and moving to her side. “What happened?” he asks, finding he actually sounds a little bit worried.

As he’s cutting away her clothing (respectfully) and unraveling gauze, her accent slips through her cover as she says slowly, “I went in for close range, couldn’t find a good shot on Fisk. He pulled a knife on me, and I wasn’t quite fast enough.” She laughs and lets him take over with her care, using her now freed hand to brush the hair from her eyes; it leaves streaks of blood across her forehead. “You think I’d be fast enough.”

He can’t even come up with a smart remark because he’s trying to figure out whether or not she’ll need stitches and whether or not his own hands are currently stable enough to do that. (He’s kind of embarrassed, he’s supposed to be a sharpshooter— a steady hand is a requirement.) What he _can_ manage is to mumble, “Stop bleeding on my blankets,” before he finishes wiping away the blood and then tries to pull a needle and thread out of his first aid kit. Good news is, it doesn’t look deep, but she has lost a lot of blood because it’s all over his bed and on the floor and all over her and now on his hands. 

For some reason, Hawkeye isn’t surprised when she reaches to take the supplies and even allows one corner of her lips to curl up before going to stitch her flesh back together. He wonders if it’s because he’s shaking so much or if she just doesn’t want to trust him with a sharp object so close to her skin. After running the needle through herself soundlessly for a few moments, the Widow murmurs, “You’re a good man. Why do you kill?”

The circus gave him a skill set for Hawkeye. Archery and acrobatics. He’s been raised with this entertaining personality, the guy who wants to make people smile. It just takes a little bit of betrayal to fuck that up, so he’s stuck to the skills he knows, the ones that keep him away from people. Sniping. The distance means he can’t see the death flash through someone’s eyes; even better, he only ever has to deal with his handler.

But he feels like he doesn’t have another way out. He’s fallen into this cycle of killing because he has no life outside of SHIELD, he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t enjoy it. He doesn’t like it. But he doesn’t know what to do about it, how to fix it.

So he says, “Because I get paid.” Because, for as long as he can remember, that’s been his justification for his actions.

Silence is what her reply is, and the woman finishes sealing up her wound. Clint isn’t sure how to interpret this, she’s difficult to read, but he wordlessly offers her a bottle of water out of his bag and hands her a few blankets for the night and lets her settle in.

The next day, he takes both their marks out and makes sure she gets to safety before contacting Coulson about extraction.

\--

Undercover isn’t necessarily all that hard, it’s just frustrating. Clint hates it, to be honest. He despises pretending to be “one of the guys” with all the other guards, but he does love being good at poker because he can usually make money on undercover jobs just from minimal gambling on the side. Sometimes more money than he’s getting paid for the gig in the first place. Attentive eyes can catch a man’s lies, and that’s why Hawkeye loves poker.

But he’ll stand around with whoever his guard partner is for the day and joke around about how shitty the boss is. (This week he’s hiding in the ranks of Justin Hammer, who is easy enough to make fun of just for being a big nerd, not to mention his stupid voice, his whole spiel is ridiculous, really.) It’s the equivalent of him sitting in any SHIELD office and bitching about Nick Fury. Not difficult to do, just agree with whoever you’re talking to.

He’s laughing it up with the guy next to him, both of them hiding behind sunglasses and in suits. Of course, his earwig is also his hearing aid, but it’s been weird and cutting out lately, so he figures if he laughs intermittently he’ll be fine. He just needs a few more hours and a clear shot on Hammer and then he’s gone.

_BANG!_

-there’s blood all over the side of his face, his ears are ringing slightly, he’s not sure if his body is reacting in pain or panic because he suddenly feels like he can’t breathe because _what the hell just happened-_

There’s a hand on his shoulder and, after pulling a knife from the inner lining of his jacket, he turns, trying to slice at-

“Widow?”

He can read her lips at least as she watches him with scrutiny. Something along the lines of “You got made.” She says more, but his eyes are on the guy next to him who is suddenly on the ground with a bullet in his head and blood in a pool around him. There’s a gun in his hand, cocked and ready to fire.

Clint realizes his mistake. He _really_ needs to get his hearing aids fixed.

She slaps him upside the head, most likely to get his attention but it must’ve rattled his aids because suddenly her words are a tirade that he can actually hear. “How did you not hear the gun? I could hear it from the other side of the room! And I was behind a curtain! Very far away!” There’s tension in her jawline, like her teeth are clenched, and the Russian is slipping through the cracks. “Undercover is not the place to be a rookie, Hawkass.”

Opening his mouth, Clint tries to defend himself with shit like “I had it handled” and “I was gonna take him down”, but he knows she’s buying none of it. He’s covered in blood and it could’ve been his own. Hawkeye has no right to give her shit.

“Get out of here, get cleaned up.” She saunters past him in her skintight suit and heads towards where Hammer’s office is. Not once does her gaze fall on him, but her voice says that she’s absolutely disgusted with his performance. “I don’t want to see you almost get killed a second time today.”

When he gets back to SHIELD, he takes credit for her kill, gets his paycheck, goes to his room, and wonders why the fuck she would give up her hidden position to save his sorry ass.

But, he realizes, it does make them even. He saved her, she saved him. Black Widow owes him nothing now.

\--

She slips in through the window as Clint is cleaning up. His mark’s body won’t be found for a few hours thanks to the magic that is an open window and a locked door, so there’s no rush for once. He can actually fold his blankets properly. “You took my mark,” comments Black Widow dryly.

“Yeah?” He looks up at her with half a smirk plastered on his face. Immediately, his attention goes back to neatly tucking his blankets back into his duffel bag. “Well you’ve taken plenty of mine.”

“I don’t get paid now.”

“If you say you did it, who’s going to argue? Just take credit and kill anyone who wants to give you shit about it.”

“Is that what you do when I take your mark?”

Clint laughs as he flattens out another blanket before beginning to press the corners together, everything lined up slowly and evenly. “Yeah, I’m not stupid. I’m in this for a paycheck.” He’s trying so hard to rationalize. Doesn’t make him feel any less guilty.

Clearly not amused, she grabs him by the collar and yanks him up from his kneeling position, to which Clint protests in a loud display of annoyance because he’s going to have to start folding all over again. But she shoves him against the wall, pinning him down. “You owe me, Hawkeye.”

He’s managed to keep his breathing even through all of this, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a little bit terrified. As much as he’s an assassin, he’s better at a distance, but she’s got the upper hand here, she could kill him with a bullet or a taser and be done with it. She’s dangerous, and he won’t underestimate that. “It’s Clint.”

She’s still visibly angry, but she lets him go with a huff of annoyance. There’s a certain level of trust between them by this point, he knows. He’s a dick for having taken her mark, but in his defense, he didn’t know. The Widow recomposes herself with one deep breath, blue eyes leveling with his. “Natasha.”

He gives her three hundred American dollars for now and promises her more next time. Hell, he even tells her his next mark.

\--

So he’s not so surprised when he walks in and the Widow— Natasha— is already there. Sitting in a corner, silent, carving at some wood with a knife.

Clint tosses his duffle bag at the corner where he intends to nest – goddammit now that she’s called it that he can’t stop thinking about it – and sets his weaponry by the window. “For once, you’re the one who’s early.”

“Not here for a job.” Her attention wavers from her work to glance up at him. It lasts for barely a second. “Just here to get paid.”

There’s this mutual respect between them, even if he can’t entirely explain it. They live by the same code. Kill. Get paid. It’s a cycle. Death for money. He wonders if it bothers her because, really, it bothers him. She also seems to live by the money, but for some reason, he feels it’s more about her dignity. For him, he’s using the money to pretend like the death doesn’t matter.

He pulls out his pile of neatly stacked blankets from his bag and then rummages around a little deeper in the bag before retrieving his stacks of cash. “You said four thousand?”

“Five, if you can manage it.” Her expression is cool.

“You get paid better than I do.” He snorts a laugh before handing over a wad of cash. “Maybe I should just freelance like you.”

It takes a few seconds for her to respond, but when she does, he’s not exactly sure how to react. “It used to be about money.” The Russian is slipping through the cracks again, and he realizes she’s analyzing him. “But you don’t talk to your handler, they’re hardly even here to supervise you. You’re avoiding people and justifying it with money. You’re too good a man for all this.”

Whoever trained her to read people should teach him to read her right back because apparently he’s an open book to her, but to him, she’s just a wall of stone.

And Clint can’t get out of this now; she’s damn right and she knows it because he’s as still as a corpse. She knows his name. She’s just going to keep showing up. Honestly, it’s been years since he’s had a true friend, so he doesn’t see the harm that talking to her can do. She understands him better than most even though she’s spent half of their time together just pissing him off.

“A guy I trusted, my mentor, he… He killed my brother.” He wipes a hand down his face, not sure how effective it actually is in hiding his expression. “And then I killed him.”

“You assassinated him.”

Clint nods slowly, not looking at her. “That’s how SHIELD picked me up.” He feels like he was a kid then, barely scraping nineteen, and it’s been years (fuck, almost a decade), so suddenly he feels like he hasn’t matured since that moment, like he hasn’t been able to get over all that shit to move on with his damn life. And now he’s been stuck in this rut of just killing to pretend like he’s doing just fine. And getting paid for doing what put him there. Because it’s all he has to try and spare himself from the guilt.

And once his brain is back in the real world, he looks up to see that Natasha is standing right in front of him, pressing something into his palm. “You should get out of this business, Clint.” Her eyes are trained on his. “You’re a good man.”

Almost in denial, he responds firmly, “I get paid.”

“I get paid for this, too. Does that not make me a good woman?”

He can’t read between her lines, she’s foreign to him, in more than one way. But she hasn’t killed him yet, she doesn’t take his marks unless she just gets there first, she has the pride to not even take credit for his work, and she told him her name. Natasha.

“You are a good woman,” he says after a few seconds.

Lips pursed, eyes severe, she challenges, “I have been trained as an assassin since I was very young, I killed other young girls to succeed, and my body count is far higher than yours.” Her features are ice. “Now I ask you again, Clint: am I a good woman?”

“You’re a good woman, Natasha.”

He has come to realize that the profession doesn’t make the person.

Natasha draws away from him, pulling her hand away. He tears his eyes from hers to look at what she’s left in his palm: an arrowhead carved from wood. When he glances up again, she’s gone.

\--

The sunlight is beating in, he’s not too happy about that. He pulls strands of her hair over his face to shade himself, but apparently he catches a knot in her hair because she hisses like a cat and just about snaps at him until she recalls what’s going on, where she is, who he is. “Clearly I’m not used to this,” she sighs before sinking back down into her pillow.

He started bringing pillows to nest with after he realized that she didn’t necessarily sleep comfortably with just blankets. And he started bringing more blankets because she stayed with him quite a bit and he didn’t like giving her his. And then eventually he just told her to stay in his blanket nest with him because it would be more comfortable than the floor. (She didn’t believe him because the whole thing looked like a damn mess but was surprised when he was right.) And then she just showed up basically on all of his missions, even when she didn’t have her own in the same place. They even met up for coffee one time outside of a job. Then they slept together. That was a decision, good or bad, Clint wasn’t sure because she went missing for almost two months afterwards. And when she came back, she just stayed beside him at night on his missions and vanished whenever he had to leave. He wasn’t sure that she even had jobs anymore.

But they’d fallen into this habit of him wrapping around her at night and she just slept like a rock and whenever the alarm went off that reminded him he had to kill, she would pat his face until he woke up because, with her around, he didn’t need to wear his aids to sleep, which was infinitely more comfortable. It was a decent routine.

And it’s all peaceful in this moment until Clint realizes that it’s morning. He was supposed to take the shot last night. His eyes are wide open and panic paints across his features. “Shit,” he breathes, knowing his handler can’t be far from this whole situation. “Shit, Nat, we’re in trouble.” How Coulson hasn’t come to find him yet is stunning. He’s just worried that Phil will see Natasha and—

“Calm down, I dealt with it last night,” she breathes after rolling over so that she’s facing her; she has to remember that he’s deaf and tries her hardest to accommodate that, annunciating clearly and talking slowly, trying to make it so that lip-reading will be easier on him. “Switched out one of his fun pills for something a little less fun.”

The way his eyes fall shut and his lips just curve up into this stupid smirk make her feel like she definitely did something right by letting him sleep. “Thank you, Tasha,” he whispers and tucks himself a little closer against her, knowing she is really warm. (Maybe he should start bringing a space heater for them?)

Silence reigns and Clint’s about to go back to sleep, curled up against Natasha, until she decides to push him away from her just enough so that she can pull his chin up so that they’re making eye-contact, so that he can read her lips. “We should stop this.”

He sighs. It’s not that he hasn’t had that thought before, especially since all of this has been going on, but he just… Clint doesn’t know if he can leave. This cycle of kill, get paid, and go back to SHIELD is all he knows. It’s all he’s had for almost a decade. What else is there out there for him?

He really just wants to bury his face in her chest because then he can feel her heartbeat; it’s always comforting, and it would mean they wouldn’t have to deal with this. “Not now, Nat,” he mutters before leaning back into his side of the blanket pile, hoping she’ll just drop it; it’s too early for this conversation again and there’s still sun in his face.

“You keep asking about my assignments.” It’s a statement. He opens one eye, and she painfully continues, “You’re my mark, Clint.”

As if he didn’t see this coming. Really, SHIELD assigned him the Black Widow a couple months back, but he keeps saying he can’t find her. “You’re mine too,” he says under his breath, knowing she’s more than capable of hearing it. “I got assigned to you a while ago.”

There’s silence again. Clint breaks it: “Well this is awkward.”

“Hawkward.” Straight face.

He laughs and pushes against her a little bit, pushing her off balance so she rolls from her side onto her back. He won’t be able to read her lips so she won’t be able to talk. “The jokes aren’t funny, Widow. I mean, in theory, if I made jokes about you, it’d be like why didn’t you kill me after we slept together?” He smirks and looks up into her eyes now that she’s rolled back to face him and—

—and he definitely overstepped his bounds. “Tasha-“

“Clint, that’s not funny.”

She’s right. Especially because they’re literally assigned to kill each other. And either one of them could get a decent payday out of this. And instead, they’re laying comfortably in a messy pile of blankets next to each other and acting like they’re in an actual relationship, if that’s even remotely close to what this is. He realizes he’s been forfeiting a paycheck because he doesn’t want to lose her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said it, that was too far,” Clint rambles for a bit before reaching over to brush hair from her eyes. “I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“And why wouldn’t I?”

He pauses. There’s a delay. “You’re a good woman, Natasha.”

“And why haven’t you killed me yet?”

His heart sort of just freezes up in his chest. Because why _the hell_ would she even ask that? She knows he cares about her, and if she doesn’t know that by now-

“After all, you’d get paid.”

Defending himself isn’t even the priority here. Finding a way to explain that he likes her a lot but isn’t in love with her is another story. Trying to get out of the conversation that leads to him saying that he kills because he doesn’t know what else to do with his Hell-bound life is kind of also important. How to organize all of these thoughts coherently so she doesn’t kill _him_ is also a situation.

Good news: she’s patient.

So Clint kind of gapes at her for a few minutes, grasping for words that are out of reach, and shit, he can’t even hear himself, so he reaches past her for his aids real quick, knowing that he needs to watch his own tone of voice, and as often as he thinks he’s being civil, he doesn’t come off that way.

Damn is she patient.

Heart racing in his chest, he starts, “I have no life outside of killing.” Saying that out loud makes him realize how empty he is on the inside and that he’s really damaged from years of pent up shit. “I had a brother. I had parents. Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead. I haven’t made friends because they all just so happen to kill the people I love.” Is it sad to think that Swordsman had been his only friend? That all of his life’s problems could boil down to the actions of one man? “I don’t know how to properly handle people.

“But I haven’t killed you yet because I think I have… feelings for you?” God, he probably sounds like a high school kid feeding her bullshit. “I don’t love you, not yet, anyways. But I also know that everyone I love dies. And I don’t want to see that happen to you. So I don’t want to kill you because I don’t want to see someone who I almost love die.” He’s biting his lower lip. Everything in him is screaming about how pathetic he is and how stupid everything sounds coming out of his mouth. “You understand me more than most people do, Natasha, and you’re important to me. I won’t kill you because the paycheck doesn’t matter. It never really has mattered.”

They’ve slept side-by-side plenty of times now. She could have killed him in his sleep, but he could have returned the favor just as easily. That kind of vulnerability means that there’s a trust and respect between them. Whether it’s between assassins or a couple of human beings with actual emotions, Clint really isn’t sure.

“Now I’m one hundred percent certain that I won’t kill you, but I don’t know that I want to get out of the business either,” he continues sharply, hoping that he can defend that position as well. “The money, it’s just a motivator, keeps me going during the day. And I guess I like going on missions now because I can see you.” He runs a hand through his hair, realizing he’s probably rambling, but he’s processing his own thoughts in his head as they’re spilling from his mouth. “I just don’t know how to interact with real people anymore. So what else am I supposed to do with my time if I can’t find a real job? Assassin… It’s just easy. Pull a trigger and walk away. Try to forget about it.”

Her eyes rake over him, her lips formulating a simple response: “We could go together, you know.”

Snorting a half-laugh, he asks, “And why the hell would you waste your time on me?”

“Damaged goods generally cost less. Means I could afford to miss a paycheck.”

Now he actually laughs. For a coldhearted bitch who drives him up a fucking wall, she sure has a damn good sense of humor.

\--

She’s on mission, and he’s on mission. Two different marks. Not a big deal. They stayed in the same blanket and pillow pile last night.

Natasha’s already in deep cover inside, and he just needs to act soon. And then he sees her by a window, and she even looks up at where she knows he’s perched, but the smile she flashes is clearly directed at the man in front of her. She’s talking to him with this improvised charm, and it almost looks like she’s even flirting.

Time to get his mark.

He sets up one half of the cable so it’s attached to the window frame before taking the arrow it’s attached to and firing it with perfect precision at the outer wall right above the window where he can see his Widow. Clint clips his bow to his quiver and then, with the zipline in place, set himself up to fly like a hawk right through that window.

(Nat would’ve been so proud of that joke.)

And so he’s smashing through the glass a few seconds later, rolling across the ground with a nocked arrow immediately pointed at Black Widow; she was perched like a cat, low to the ground with two guns aimed right for his skull.

“I’ve engaged the Black Widow,” he informs Coulson in a low but firm tone before taking his shot, and she starts taking hers.

Bullets are grazing past his head, and he knows she’s cutting it damn close. His arrows embed themselves in the wall behind her and the floor around her because she’s moving like a lioness, swiftly and silently.

Coulson’s response is muffled because his aids are cutting out and now really isn’t a good time for that, but then again, maybe it is. “You may be able to move fast,” he laughs and stalls his fire while she rises to her full height, composing herself, “but I don’t think you’re flameproof.”

And he sure as hell knows everything in this damn office is absolutely ten-thousand percent flammable. And that they’re ten stories up. And that the door locks from the outside, which Natasha managed. How, he has no clue.

So when the explosion goes off, the whole room erupts into flames. Fire devours the curtains and starts to hungrily streak across the carpet. And Clint spends a few heartbeats recovering from it before calling in to Coulson, who he still can’t hear, “This whole place went up, Phil! Call the fire department!”

And he’s got shit to do.

The man who’s been caught in the crossfire of all this, the man who thought he had a shot with Miss Natasha, Clint’s got to get him to safety. And so he pulls out another metal-cabled arrow and jams the point of the arrowhead into the wall as an anchor. Quickly, he tackles the man away from the flames and starts to tie him up with the other half of the cable. Then proceeds to throw him out the window.

And the gasoline tanks that Natasha planted are going up now, black smoke filling the room, ash floating through the air. Clint yanks out his aid, knowing he has to lose communication with Phil; he throws it into the crackling fire. “Nat, how’re we doing?”

The woman is pulling two bodies out of hiding one at a time, one male, one female, and passing them off to Clint to put in the fire. (Her thievery got her into the morgue earlier that day. Getting dead bodies into the building was even easier. He really has no idea the full extent of her skill set.) She knows he can’t hear her by now and just keeps her attention on the task at hand.

God, he wishes he could hear because he knows they’re at a standstill here, but now’s no time to freeze up because as soon as she’s done, he can see her lips moving, but the smoke makes her too hard to read. And she must’ve forgotten, she’s not entirely used to him being deaf, afterall, because she’s running towards him and grabs his hand before hauling him back across the room and towards the vents.

She’s up there first, using him as a ladder even though she really didn’t need to, and then he allows himself to climb in, following closely behind them as the smoke starts to fill up the vents. Clint has to hope that she calculated this right because they’re getting into dangerous territory—his chest feels heavy and their visibility is getting worse, which is exponentially worse for a man who takes pride in his sight.

Whatever happens, he isn’t sure because suddenly she’s facing him and then something reverberates through the vents and she just drops; after a second, he can recognize that she kicked out the side.

He follows with silent trust.

They’re clear, but only for a few minutes. As soon as he’s on the ground, he’s trying to find the clothing she planted for him, and a quick change is in order. He glances to check on her to see her bare back as she pulls her shirt off over her head.

Clint bites his lip but turns his attention back to switching pants.

It’s barely more than a minute before they’re stepping out of the room and rushing down the hall, Natasha pulling the fire alarm as they move. She looks like some kind of hipster now, and his own outfit isn’t too far away from hers because why does he have to wear a hat?

He can see the lights on the alarms going off, and he’s immensely glad that he can’t hear them. Hates the shrill noise. Clint can see Natasha hates it too because her nose is all crinkled up in annoyance.

They leave in the throngs of people exiting the building, moving quickly to get away, sliding through the crowd, separated only from time to time, never out of each other’s sight. When they are side-by-side, he always finds a way to take her hand. Sometimes their fingers lace together, a fit like puzzle pieces. Sometimes it’s just a brush of the hand, enough to remember that they’re in this together.

He needs it. She reminds him why he’s running.


End file.
